What good is a bunch of features if your mobile app’s field crew adoption rate sucks?
The answer is simple: not much. Even if your mobile app has a variety of useful features, if the field crews do not use them, they are useless. The success of a mobile app depends on its adoption rate, and if within your organization that rate is low, it means the mobile app is probably too cumbersome to use and/or unreliable for their use.
A low field crew adoption rate usually means your field crews will revert back to their tried and true method for field data collection: paper.
There are several reasons why your mobile app’s field crew adoption rate may suck. Some of these reasons include:
- Poor User Interface: If your mobile app has a complicated or cluttered user interface, it will deter field crews from using it. A simple and intuitive user interface is essential for a mobile app’s success.
- Inadequate Training: Field crews need proper training to understand how to use the mobile app effectively. If the training is inadequate, they will not be able to take advantage of all the features, leading to low adoption rates.
- Reliability: Technical issues such as slow loading times, crashes, or bugs can be frustrating for field crews. If they encounter technical issues frequently, they will stop using the mobile app altogether.
- Lack of Integration: Field crews often use multiple tools to complete their tasks, and if your mobile app does not integrate well with these tools, it will not be useful to them.
Keep it simple
To improve your mobile app’s field crew adoption rate, the app has to be simple to use. Nothing overly complicated, keep options to a minimun, and make sure the app is responsive. This also means that the form you design for data collection needs to be intuitive and consistent with all your other forms, so that the field crews can don’t have to learn different quirks for different forms.
Your team also needs to provide adequate training, address technical issues promptly, and integrate it with other tools. You should also gather feedback from your field crews and make changes based on their suggestions.
Bottom line
Make your mobile app easy to use by having fewer options, fewer buttons, and less clutter. Build out an intuitive workflow. Use standard/common icons. Take a less-is-more approach. And this doesn’t mean less powerful, it simply means that the power is hidden, behind the interface.
That’s what we’ve done with XForms.
Want to learn more about XForms, and how it can replace your paper forms?
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